In harvesting vegetables, it is desirable to harvest the vegetables without bruising, breaking or tearing the vegetables so that they will be acceptable for market. Most vegetables in their marketable state are very tender, easily bruised, broken and torn, and therefore may be severely damaged in value or rendered worthless by rough handling. Existing machinery to harvest such crops for the canning, packing or processing market leaves the crops in a condition generally unacceptable to buyers for fresh market use and unable to compete with similar crops harvested by hand. However, automatic machinery for harvesting vegetables is necessary and desirable due to the size of the operation and location of the crops wherein it is impossible to obtain the labor necessary to harvest the crops by hand.
In prior vegetable harvesters, the use of pneumatic conveyors from the cutting mechanism to a container is well known, as evidenced by the patent to Smith et al (U.S. Pat. No. 3,855,760). However, in the patent to Smith the harvested crop which is conveyed through a pneumatic tube, is deposited directly onto a conveyor for subsequent elevation and discharge into a container mounted on the rear of the harvester vehicle. This additional handling of the crop tends to create additional damage to the crop thereby reducing the value of the crop. Although the stripping reels of Smith et al are vertically adjustable and although the container may be elevated for the purpose of dumping the crop from the container into a larger container by means of a tipping operation, the mechanisms for carrying out these operations are completely independent of each other.